


What the Wolf Wants

by Ruusverd



Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [13]
Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25935604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruusverd/pseuds/Ruusverd
Summary: Geralt and Ciri discuss her trip to the Old Stone Kingdom, and why she doesn't need to prove anything to the Wolf.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863010
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	What the Wolf Wants

Geralt woke up with a start, with the sound of tiny skittering paws in his ears. He panicked briefly before realizing Ciri was still tucked safely under his arm, asleep with the wolf amulet clutched tightly in her hand. _She’s safe,_ he told himself, taking a deep breath. _You’re safe._ _You got her out, n_ _o one died. It was just a dream._

He sat up, rubbing his face tiredly. He hadn’t slept much, and when he had managed to doze off he’d had bad dreams. There was a reason he preferred to sleep Stepped, particularly after a night like this one. He decided he might as well get up. It wasn’t light yet, but the first touch of dawn was on the horizon and a few of the Horse were already up, stirring around the camp and tending the bronze cooking pots that served the whole group. He pushed himself to his feet and went to try and find his own clothes. He found them laid out to dry near Alladai, who was standing the last watch. 

“Wolf,” Alladai nodded to him, “Your girl all right?”

“She’s asleep,” Geralt said. It wasn’t really an answer, but it was all he had at the moment.

“I understand that last night you were frightened and angry, but I don’t appreciate you threatening my people,” the Horse man told him in an even tone, “It wasn’t their fault, they had no reason to think the girl would sneak off.”

Geralt bit his tongue against a scathing retort. They were dependent on the Horse’s goodwill, after all. “I apologize for threatening your people,” _even though they were miserably_ _incompetent_ _and ought to be flogged,_ he mentally added, “It won’t happen again.” _Because I’ll keep an eye on her myself from now_ _on_ _instead of trusting your_ _useless_ _guards._

Alladai  was  fortunately  not a mind reader, and he therefore nodded, satisfied  with the apology. He gestured to Geralt’s clothes. “Your girl can keep the clothes she has on for now. They were for Jorhal’s hand-child, but  he won’t be home to give them to her until long after we’ve parted ways. We always stop to trade with the Laughing Men on the way north, and I think neither of us would like to visit them with a Lion’s child in our party.  If she is wearing our clothes, they’ll assume she’s hand- daughter to one of us.” He smiled faintly, “Our neutrality doesn’t require us to correct any mistaken assumptions our trading partners might make.”

Geralt nodded his thanks. By the time he’d gotten changed the whole camp was starting to stir. He retrieved food for himself and Ciri from the cook fire and got back to her just as she was blinking herself awake.

“Here,” he handed her a bowl of some sort of boiled grain porridge with a handful of berries in it and sat next to her with his own portion.

“Thank you.” She didn’t look at him and focused on her food. She ate silently for a few minutes before looking at him almost angrily. “When are you going to punish me? Stop acting like nothing happened!”

Geralt chewed his mouthful of fruit thoughtfully, then swallowed. “ I wasn’t planning on punishing you. You know what you did wrong, don’t you? ”

“Of course I do, I went to the city when you told me not to, I’m not stupid!”

Geralt ignored her tone, “ You know you could have gotten us both worse than killed ?”

“Yes,” Ciri’s voice was smaller.

“If I tell you in the future to stay out of a place because it’s dangerous, are you going to sneak off in the night and go anyway?”

“No,” Ciri shuddered.

Geralt shrugged one shoulder,  “ Then I don’t see why we need to talk about it. You got  scared half out of your wits , I think that’s punishment enough.”

C iri made a dissatisfied face.

“Do you _want_ me to punish you?” Geralt asked her incredulously, not sure why she wasn’t happy to escape so lightly. _He_ certainly wouldn’t have questioned such good fortune at her age.

“N-no,” Ciri made a frustrated gesture, “But I don’t want you to just act like it was nothing, either. I don’t know. It’s like you don’t even care!”

“Believe me if I didn’t care I wouldn’t have gone in there after you. It wasn’t nothing. It was the furthest thing from nothing. I’m not ignoring what you did. I’m not going to trust you out of my sight for a while.” He looked at her seriously, “That’s not a punishment, it’s a consequence. I was scared half out of my wits too, and I want to be sure nothing like that happens again.” Geralt frowned, studying her. “If you're determined to talk about it, tell me why you did it. You don’t always do what I tell you but you've never been dishonest about it before. You’ve never crept away in the night to do something I specifically told you not to.”

Ciri looked embarrassed. “ Everyone says the Wolf only wants hunters who are the strongest and bravest, and I thought maybe being brave enough to explore the city would impress him enough to send me a soul even though I wasn’t born in a  W olf tribe .”

“I was afraid it was something like that,” Geralt looked at the bowl in his hands, considering his words, “Ciri, the chance that the Wolf will send you a soul when you reach the age to Step is vanishingly small.”

Ciri froze, her expression stricken.

“Not because you did anything wrong or because you weren’t impressive enough,” he hastened to reassure her, “but because that just isn’t how souls work. Unless it's deliberately changed you inherit your soul from your birth parents. Even if you never met them, even if you don’t know what your parents’ shapes _were,_ that's what you inherit. Your soul is decided at birth, it’s not something that can be changed naturally just by impressing one god or another. The Law of Surprise might override that, I don't know, but I think it's unlikely.  


“I’m not saying you can’t be a Wolf if you want to. If that’s what you really want then when you’re old enough Yennefer can help you cut off the Lion and get a wolf soul instead. And I’m not saying that you’re wrong when you say that’s what you were born to be. Just the opposite. I don’t want you to think that you need to do dangerous things to impress the Wolf, and if a wolf soul isn’t what comes to you naturally I don't want you to think it’s because you weren’t good enough or the Wolf somehow rejected you.”

“Is that wrong? To want to change my totem if it isn’t a wolf?” Ciri’s voice wavered.

“No, it’s not wrong at all. Unusual, but not wrong.” He made a vague gesture with his hand, not sure what he was trying to convey by it. “It happens that way, sometimes. Not often, but sometimes a person is born to the wrong totem and their soul just doesn’t fit them. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with the person, or with their birth totem, it only means the two don’t fit together. So they go out and find the one they were supposed to have, and become that instead.”

“But I already don’t look like the Wolf’s people, if the Lion comes first and I have to change it will people think I'm just a Lion pretending to be a Wolf?”

“People might be a bit confused about what you are at first glance,” Geralt admitted, “but your Stepping is a physical manifestation of your soul, no matter if you were born with it or if it was something you chose. If you Step to a wolf, then you’re a wolf, no one can argue with that. Copper skin, differences in build, the shape of your face… those are minor details when everyone can see the shape of your soul standing in front of them.”

Ciri nodded, trying to discreetly wipe at her eyes. “But what if I try to get a wolf soul and the Wolf rejects me? What if I’m not enough for him? Everyone says the Wolves have to be the most fearless and powerful hunters in the world to please him.”

Geralt put his arm around Ciri’s shoulders and drew her close against his side.  He saw that the Horse were breaking down the camp and preparing to leave, and knew their conversation was about to be cut short . “Don’t take what anyone says about the Wolf a s truth , not even if it’s a priest of the Wolf that says it.  Perhaps especially not then. 

“The wolf inside me says that if the Wolf was impressed by individuals with extraordinary strength and power he’d have a Champion, and he doesn’t. My wolf says being brave means doing what I think is right even if it’s hard or dangerous, not doing dangerous things just to prove I'm not scared. Being strong means fighting and hunting alongside my tribe to help protect and provide for us all, not killing for no reason except to prove the superiority of the Wolf in general or myself in particular.”

“But you don’t fight and hunt with a tribe,” Ciri looked at him in confusion, “If the Wolf wants everyone to stay with their pack and work together, why do you live alone while the bad priests live in tribes?”

Geralt sighed and stood up, reaching out a hand to help Ciri to her feet. “That, young one, is a long story full of what Jaskier would call ‘irony.’” He  raised their joined hands pointedly ,  “But I’ m not alone anymore, am I ?  We have each other, and a few very good friends  who travel with us . ”

Ciri smiled at him,  keeping hold of his hand, “Yes.”  Then s he paused,  frowning. “ But not  Cahir,  right? I don’t want to be friends with Cahir .”

Geralt nodded  in  solemn  agreement , “ Nobody has to be friends with Cahir if they don’t want to .”

Ciri  jerked her head sharply in satisfaction and together they  followed the others onto the boat. They didn’t look east to the Plains or  west to the  mountains , but north towards the Crown of the World.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware everything I've posted lately has some weird spaces in the middle of words or between the words and the punctuation. AO3 is messing those up, when I try to fix them they're not present in the actual text box, even when I look at the HTML. It's annoying, but I don't know how to fix it since they're not actually there.
> 
> If anyone reads the actual books and thinks "Hey, this bit of world building doesn't exactly match what RuusVerd said in their fanfic," just know that either a) I have an explanation in my head that makes it fit the books or b) I know it doesn't exactly match but I'm tweaking canon slightly to make the characters/plot work. I don't want to analyze these to death pointing out everything that didn't 100% come from the books, lol.


End file.
